‘Don’t know.’ It was standard practice for the covert surveillance teams to stay somewhere different for an operation such as this and to avoid communicating, except via the agreed method.

Suzy returned with their drinks. They listened to the singer for a while and Kate glanced about her once more. With its pastel rugs, parquet floor, the glass and chrome bar, this salon felt like a temple to modern Berlin: slick, stylish and low key, as if the city’s violent, tumultuous past had belonged to a different world entirely.

Half an hour later, they caught a cab to a restaurant called Borchardt, which Suzy insisted was a ‘Berlin institution’. It was a German twist on a French brasserie, with high ceilings, grand pillars, waiters dressed in black waistcoats and white shirts, and French café chairs and tables packed in close together, save for the upholstered maroon velvet booths along the far wall.

The waiter brought the menus and Kate glanced around her. It was the kind of place where people spend the evening watching everyone else – and eating Wiener Schnitzel, which seemed the main course of choice for every second table.

They ordered. Kate decided on Schnitzel – when in Rome – and gazed around the room again, as Suzy and Julie appeared to be getting along like a house on fire, until Suzy turned the conversation to the internal politics of their own organization and brought up Ian’s ill-disguised ambition to succeed Sir Alan as C. ‘Do you think he’ll get it?’ The question was directed at Julie.

‘I have no idea.’

‘But he wants it badly, right?’

‘I should think so. Wouldn’t you if you were in his shoes?’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s okay. A bit chippy sometimes.’

‘I heard he’s a bit of a player. On the romantic front, I mean.’ Kate watched Suzy’s expression. Either she was spectacularly ill-informed – since Julie’s affair with Ian was now pretty much common knowledge inside the building and probably beyond – or she was being provocative, malicious, or both.

Julie shrugged to indicate she had no idea, or did not want to be drawn. ‘I just need to go the Ladies,’ Suzy said.

Julie waited until she was out of earshot before she exploded. ‘What is she – fucking autistic?’

‘I don’t think she can possibly know. Even she isn’t that stupid.’

‘Everyone knows.’ It was said with a disconsolate shrug.

‘I’m not going to say I told you so.’

‘Good!’ Julie said. ‘What a mess. I should have listened to you. He proposed to me last night.’

‘What did you say?’

‘No! Of course! I told him I was not the marrying kind and never would be. He burst into tears and said he was heartbroken and he would now be on his own for the rest of his life and . . . Oh, my God, I thought he was never going to leave. He just cried and cried like a baby.’

‘That doesn’t really strike me as a normal kind of reaction.’